Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

  She was referring to the 1941 release of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

  The irony of Hepburn’s snub of Tennessee Williams was that in years to come, he would create two of her most memorable roles—that of Violet Venable in Suddenly Last Summer, and that of Amanda in the televised version of The Glass Menagerie.]

  ***

  One afternoon, the love goddess herself, Lana, showed up at William’s office at MGM. According to Tennessee, “She poured out her marriage woes to me, talking about her difficult times with Stephen Crane. She even suggested that I work some of her troubles into the script, particularly an episode inspired by when she discovered he was a bigamist. She also suggested that I have the soldier in the script try to commit suicide by driving his car over a cliff after she refused to marry him.”

  “It happened in real life with Stephen,” Lana told Tennessee, “and it would be a very dramatic scene.”

  That day, Tennessee shared his own opinion about marriage with her: “I think no woman divorces a man who’s great in bed. If he delivers in bed, a woman, so I am told, can endure a lot.”

  “That’s not the problem with Stephen,” she said. “He’s very good in bed. Just ask Joan Crawford or Rita Hayworth. Frankly, I’d like to date Frank Sinatra and marry him, but his Nancy seems like such a clinging vine.”

  She also revealed that she was almost flat broke. “Bills are piling up.”

  Before leaving his office, she asked if she could read some of the script he’d labored over. When he revealed that he had only five minor pages of screenplay to give her, she seemed disappointed.

  The next day she called him, complaining, “I was dumbfounded by a lot of the dialogue. I’m playing a spoiled society girl, not a poetess. Can’t you make her speak like the character I’m playing?”

  He later claimed in his memoirs that he had avoided “any language that was at all eclectic or multisyllabic. But the dialogue was beyond the young lady’s comprehension.”

  Years later, when he wrote the play Small Craft Warnings, he arranged for the character of Quentin, an elderly writer, to comment about his experience in Hollywood: “They found me too literate on my first assignment, creating a vehicle for the producer’s doxy, a grammar school dropout.”

  [Synonyms for doxy include bimbo, floozy, hoochie, hussy, minx, slut, tramp, wench, and whore. Tennessee, through the character of Quentin, was referring to the producer of Marriage Is a Private Affair, Pandro Berman, and its star, Lana Turner.]

  Late one Monday morning, Berman phoned Lana, telling her that Williamshad been removed from his job as a scriptwriter, and that two experienced writers, Leonore Coffee and David Hertz, had been hired to replace him.

  He also informed her that Gene Kelly had dropped out of the picture, and that “Your handsome leading men will be John Hodiak and James Craig. Both of them are Louis B. Mayer’s best hope to replace Clark Gable, who may never regain his pre-war acclaim. It’s been a while since he’s played Rhett Butler.”

  [Rounding out the supporting cast were Hugh Marlowe, Frances Gifford, Keenan Wynn, Natalie Schafer, and Tom Drake.]

  ***

  Just before the filming of Marriage Is a Private Affair, as Lana was looking for a way to escape from her divorce-related traumas, she eagerly accepted the invitation of Frank Sinatra to occupy his vacation home in Palm Springs while he was in New York.

  [During his rounds of Manhattan, Sinatra was frequently seen with the blonde actress, Marilyn Maxwell.]

  First, Lana phoned one of her girl friends, either Linda Darnell or Susan Hayward (perhaps both), asking them to accompany her. “We’ll find something on the hoof when we get there,” Lana promised.

  Both actresses, however, had other commitments.

  Finally, she called Henry Willson, knowing that from his stable of boys, he could provide a handsome, well-endowed escort for her.

  After a weekend with John Derek in Palm Springs, Lana reported back to Willson: “If a contest were held tomorrow, Derek would win as having the most beautiful penis in Hollywood, and, as you know, other than you, I’m the best judge of that.”

  He suggested that a suitable escort might be Derek Harris (later billed as John Derek). “He’s been ranting and raving about you ever since I introduced you.”

  “He might be ideal,” she said “I thought he was ever so handsome.”

  “He’s a winner, baby,” Willson said, “and usually hot to trot.”

  The next morning, Derek, clad in a T-shirt and a pair of tight-fitting shorts, was behind the wheel of her Lincoln Continental driving them into the desert toward Palm Springs. En route, he confided to Lana that Willson was having a hard time getting him launched.

  [Derek had just finished an uncredited role in Since You Went Away, which film critic Bosley Crowther had appraised as overcomplicated: “Selznick’s first screen production in four years features a script with an excess of exhausting emotional detail,” one of which might have involved Derek’s brief on-screen emotional involvement with the character portrayed by Shirley Temple.]

  “I’ve seen the rushes of Since You Went Away.” Derek told her. “I play Shirley Temple’s boyfriend. If you blink, you’ll miss me.”

  He went on to tell her that he’d been assigned another small role in David O. Selznick’s upcoming new film, I’ll Be Seeing You. Ginger Rogers, temporarily on parole for the holidays, falls in love with a disturbed soldier (Joseph Cotten).

  According to Derek, “Once again, I’ve been cast with Shirley Temple. That brat is growing up, and Selznick doesn’t seem to know what to do with Miss Lollipop. With all these scene-stealers, who will notice me?”

  “Sounds like more of Selznick’s famous schmaltz to me,” Lana said. “But I’ll notice you, no matter how small the part. You’re very distinctive.”

  “You’re a gal after my own heart.”

  She glanced flirtatiously at him. “Actually, I invited you down for something else.”

  He smiled at her. “You’ll get that…and a lot more.”

  “I can hardly wait,” she claimed.

  ***

  On the morning of her return to Los Angeles from her weekend in Palm Springs with Derek, Lana phoned Willson, as he had demanded a full report, and said, “Thank God you haven’t ruined him for women. In fact, he seems to worship beautiful women. He treated me like a goddess.”

  “We got there right after lunch, and I retired to my bedroom for a while. He said he wanted to swim in Frank’s pool. When I woke up, I put on my suit and went to join him. What I saw amazed me. He was standing stark naked beside the pool, with his hands on his hips. He was absolutely gorgeous...and nude.”

  “I agree with you,” Willson told her. “Been there, done it.”

  “I know you have,” she said. “You’re a dirty old man, but I adore you. At Christmastime, I want you to strip Derek naked, tie a ribbon around it, and place it under my tree.”

  “Okay.”

  Word about Lana and Derek spread among the young beauties at MGM. Elizabeth Taylor heard about it and invited Lana for lunch in the commissary. “I developed a crush on Derek in school, even though he was six years older than me—and not in the same class,” Taylor said.

  In a later memoir, entitled Elizabeth Taylor, she wrote about Derek: “There was this most beautiful boy—to me, then, like a god. One day, we were going down the corridor, and he tripped me, then picked me up. ‘Hi there, beautiful,’ he said. Oh, you can’t imagine. I was in such ecstasy. I went to the girl’s room and just sat there dreaming about him.”

  She confessed to Lana that her closest friend, Roddy McDowall, the British actor, taught her to satisfy a man without getting pregnant. “I was told to pretend that it was a lollipop. I was one of those devotees of childhood sexuality.”

  Lana’s dates with Derek were cut short by Selznick, who ordered him, for publicity purposes, to start escorting Shirley Temple to various events, including premieres and parties.

  Another disincentive to Lana’s in
terest in him came when McDowall, who was also her gay friend, told her that Derek worked as a male prostitute on the side. “He needs the money and charges ten dollars a session. Spencer Tracy is his best customer, although Derek adores beautiful women like you.”

  “I guess a guy has to make a living,” she said. “But there’s something about him that troubles me. I suspect he has a dark side I know nothing about. He’s also a bullshitter. Would you believe that he told me that he’s the bastard son of Greta Garbo? He tells everybody that, although his mother is that very minor actress, Dolores Johnson.”

  “Derek wants to paint me in the nude,” she said, “but I turned him down. ‘Why put me on canvas when you can see the real thing in the flesh?’ I asked him.”

  There were rumors in the press that Temple was going to marry Derek, but she went for John Agar instead, much to her later regret.

  In 1988, Lana read Child Star, Shirley’s memoirs, and didn’t like what she’d written about Derek. Shirley referred to him as “a self-important young man who had pleasant features, perhaps a little too sensitive for my taste. With a shock of dark hair cascading artfully over his forehead and his suit shoulders padded to disguise a delicate frame, he made a highly photogenic companion.”

  “To hell with her,” Lana said. “I’ve been over every inch of Derek’s body. He doesn’t need to pad anything.”

  In Child Star, Shirley also made a shocking revelation, claiming that Derek would often use a dangerously sharp knife to furiously stab the air, aiming the weapon at some invisible enemy. Summing up, she wrote, “Not every girl gets to neck with a knife-wielding bastard.”

  “My god,” Lana said. “Little Miss Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm makes him out to be psychotic. I don’t believe a word of it.”

  After their weekend together in Palm Springs, Lana met Derek again at a party at the home of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Both men had just completed their 1949 film, Knock on Any Door, in which Derek played a juvenile delinquent being defended on a murder charge by an idealistic lawyer, as played by Bogart.

  That same year, Derek had also been cast in the Oscar-winning All the King’s Men, playing the adopted football-playing son of Broderick Crawford. Derek’s character ends up in a wheelchair in the aftermath of trying to please his image-conscious father.

  Both Bogie and Lana predicted great things for Derek in the 1950s, but lived to see him make a string of lackluster movies. Ultimately, he became famous not as an actor, but for marrying beautiful women and becoming a Svengali-like mentor to Bo Derek. He directed some of the films she eventually starred in, which were reviewed as some of the worst movies ever made.

  ***

  Lana was invited to the premiere of David O. Selznick’s Since You Went Away. Much to the delight of photographers (they weren’t known as paparazzi yet), she showed up on the arm of the young British actor, Peter Lawford. The verdict was that the handsome star and the beautiful blonde goddess looked “absolutely ravishing together.”

  Although Peter was attired in a well-tailored tuxedo, Lana was the standout. With her long blonde tresses, she made a spectacular entrance at the Carthay Circle Theatre, at the time one of the most spectacular movie palaces in L.A.

  She wore an unusual ensemble that night: A wide-skirted black strapless gown of sheer net sprinkled with sequins. The long black gloves were mandatory, as well as the diamond jewelry and mink wrap. Even her shoes were unusual: A pair of lace satin slippers. After the premiere, the glamorous couple were photographed at the Clover Club with Lawford nibbling at her ear.

  At the premiere, she was greeted by Ingrid Bergman, who had befriended her on the set of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Bergman was escorted by Gregory Peck, her upcoming star in Spellbound (1945).

  She had heard rumors that the established star and the upcoming star were lovers, even though each was married. Peck was dashingly handsome and kissed Lana on both cheeks.

  “Lucky Ingrid,” Lana said to Lawford when the pair was out of hearing distance.

  “Lucky me to be out with you,” he answered.

  She greeted Jennifer Jones again, and the two were polite but not particularly friendly. Lana didn’t know if Jones had heard rumors about Robert Walker and her.

  Jones had already achieved stardom in The Song of Bernadette (1944), for which she’d won a Best Actress Oscar. She had separated from Walker in the autumn of 1943, and began living with Selznick, whose wife, Irene Mayer Selznick, daughter of Louis B. Mayer, eventually divorced him in 1945. Jones divorced Walker that same year, too.

  When Lana made The Bad and the Beautiful, her character of Georgia Harrison was said to have been based on Jennifer Jones.

  Mortified by the gossip, Jones cattily responded, “The last actress I would want to depict me on the screen is the notorious Lana Turner.”

  On occasion, at future gatherings, Lana and Jones came face to face, although they were never friends.

  They were two very different types of actresses, but on rare occasions, they were each considered for the same roles. When Jones turned down the female lead in Cass Timberlane (1947), co-starring Spencer Tracy, the role went to Lana.

  [Ironically, when Lana campaigned for the title role in the film adaptation of Flaubert’s Madame Bo-vary (1949), the role was assigned to Jones.]

  Both Selznick and Jones raged against both Lana and Kirk Douglas when they co-starred together in The Bad and the Beautiful. All of Hollywood was buzzing about who the film had been based on. Louella Parsons nailed it in print: Lana’s role of Georgia Harrison was based on the real-life story of Jennifer Jones, and Kirk Douglas’ character of Jonathan Shields was inspired by a real-life episode in the life of David O. Selznick.

  ***

  Peter Lawford and Lana saw each other during an eight-month period in 1944. Since she was in a deteriorating, highly publicized marriage to Stephen Crane, each of their rendezvous was kept for the most part under wraps.

  Lana had met the handsome British actor at a party at the home of his friend and sometimes lover, Keenan Wynn. Secretly, when no one was looking, he made a date for the following evening. In the words of one writer, he was “part suave, part smarmy, with thick brows and lounge lizard looks.”

  In 1954, Lawford would achieve worldwide fame when he married Patricia Kennedy, the younger sister of Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy. During his troubled later years, he became known more for his celebrity than for his acting.

  Before, during, and after his marriage, Lawford racked up a series of “gender neutral” seductions to rival those of almost any other actor in Hollywood.

  In addition to Lana Turner, Lawford’s sexual intimates included June Allyson and Van Johnson (both of whom were celebrated at the time as “America’s Sweethearts”). Lucille Ball joined Anne Baxter on the list, as did director George Cukor [“Peter was a lousy lay.”], Noël Coward, the African-American singer/actress Dorothy Dandridge, Judy Holliday, Tom Drake, Rhonda Fleming, socialite Sharman Douglas, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Janet Leigh, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Walker, Nancy Davis (later known as Nancy Reagan), Clifton Webb, Jane Wyman, and Lee Remick. He also seduced unknowns, including college cuties and hookers, male and female, who viewed him as a reliable $50 “oral trick” who required little more than their permission for him to service them orally.

  Lana also succumbed to his allure, at least for a while.

  He’d been having sex since the age of ten, when he was fellated by his English governess. Like Howard Hughes, he was known for his predilection for oral sex. Sal Mineo in the 1950s would refer to him “as the best cocksucker in Hollywood.”

  In London, in 1930, Lawford made his film debut at the age of seven, when he was assigned a role in Poor Old Bill. In 1938, he co-starred with Roddy McDowall and Freddie Bartholomew in Lord Jeff, and then later lived in Florida.

  Back in Hollywood, he landed small roles in two big hits, Mrs. Miniver and Random Harvest, each released in 1942, and each starring Greer
Garson.

  In the years ahead, he became one of MGM’s bobby sox idols, appearing in films that included Easter Parade (1948) and Little Women (also 1948.)

  In time, Lawford would be included in Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack and become a confidant of Marilyn Monroe, even being controversially linked to her death in 1962.

  When his mother, Lady May Crawford, found out that he was dating Lana, she objected almost violently, calling Lana a slut. [Lady May’s memoirs were aptly entitled Mother Bitch.] As time went by, the more her son saw of Lana, the more loudly Lady May objected, publicly referring to the blonde goddess as “all boobs and no brains.”

  Vindictively, his mother made an appointment with Louis B. Mayer, revealing to him that she suspected that her son was a homosexual, and accusing him of being intimately involved with both Van Johnson and Keenan Wynn. She went on to ask Mayer if he could arrange for some form of “treatment” to cure her son of homosexuality.

  When Lawford heard about this, he exploded in humiliation and fury. His relationship with his mother would never recover.

  In the aftermath, Lawford asked Lana to meet with Mayer and to reveal the details of her affair with him as a means of convincing him that he was not a homosexual. Temporarily, the mogul might have been persuaded, as, apparently, he’d never heard of bisexuality.

  Despite Lana’s gallant defense, Lawford was dragged out of the closet when he was arrested for fellating a teenage boy in the men’s room at Will Rogers State Park.

  “The Fixers” at MGM, Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling, were called in to suppress the story and to see that it wasn’t published in the papers. In time, thanks to the intervention of MGM, the record of Lawford’s arrest was discreetly removed from police files in Los Angeles.

  James Spada, Lawford’s biographer, wrote: “Peter Lawford at twenty-one was one of the most attractive and charming young men to be found in Hollywood since Errol Flynn became a star in 1935. His success with women would soon be almost as legendary as Flynn’s. Few could resist his boyishly open face, dazzling smile, and tight physique or his charming English accent, impeccable manners, and quick wit.”